Bike lanes to be added to roads in Tyler

The Texas Department of Transportation recently awarded the city of Tyler a grant to restripe existing roads so that there will be separate lanes for bicyclists.

The plan will be to add 12 routes for bikes for a total of 130 miles of lanes. Dr. Mena Souliman, assistant professor of civil engineering at The University of Texas at Tyler, worked with a group of graduate students to develop a model for retrofitting the city to accommodate these bike lanes.

The best roads for this project will be those wide streets without steep hills where there is not much traffic. They will also be streets the Texas Department of Transportation maintains, as these are the busiest streets in the city and are considered too dangerous to be shared by cars and bikers.

There is a budget of $1.2m for the project and 80% of that money will be covered by the grant. The remaining 20% will be paid for by the city, which will also go towards the University for carrying out the engineering of the project. The city has four years to complete both the design and the restriping of the roads.

Flyers could be used for road-based projects like these to outline any changed to road regulations and designated areas for particular types of transport.